Fiber Placement for Helicopters

Eurocopter recently completed the manufacturing of an EC 155 rear fuselage using a fiber-placement process. The company said the procedure consisted of placing “unidirectional composite material on the lay-up mold” automatically. The technical development feasibility project showed that some components could be fully integrated into the manufacturing process. As a result, the part count was cut from 32 to 16 and weight reduced by 5 to 10 percent.